Harlan, Sharon

Sharon Harlan studies patterns, processes and outcomes of class, gender and ethnic inequalities in contemporary U.S. society. A sociologist by training, she has been working most recently on interdisciplinary problems of social and environmental inequity brought about by rapid urbanization in the Phoenix, AZ, metropolitan region.

She is the project director of the Phoenix Area Social Survey, a jointly sponsored project of the Central Arizona's Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research project and the Decision Center for a Desert City. The multi-level survey of households within neighborhoods, stratified by socioeconomic variables and location, examines people's values, attitudes and behaviors concerning the local environment and the impact of income and ethnic residential segregation on social and physical environmental inequalities.

With support from the National Science Foundation, she has directed interdisciplinary studies on spatial variation in the urban heat island and the implications of climate change for heat-related health inequalities in urban neighborhoods.

Prior to joining the faculty at ASU, Harlan held positions in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy of the State University of New York at Albany and the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University.